The Wrong Way Is The Right Stuff At Tuesday Test For The True Value Modified Racing Series At Lime Rock Park

John Hoyt, series director for the True Value Modified Racing Series, deemed Tuesday's test session for the division at Lime Rock Park in Salisbury a success.

Three drivers - series founder Jack Bateman, Ken Barry and Jimmy Dolan - spent the 1-hour test session at the track running the 1.53-mile circuit backward from its normal configuration.

"Things went very very well.," Hoyt said. "We didn't have any issues at all. The guys really liked the track. They thought it was really racy. Those guys really had a good time today. Everyone got out smiling, grinning ear-to-ear and saying it was cool. It's up to Lime Rock now what's going to happen there."

Lime Rock owner Skip Barber said last week that he would like to see a Modified event at the track, possibly as early as next season.

Hoyt said the biggest issue that came to light during Tuesday's test was slowing the cars down going into the downhill on the back of the track, which is the uphill on the track's normal configuration.

"The only issue really is that we would have to put some kind of chicane where the uphill is now, which would be our downhill," You come up the [traditional] downhill, which is now the uphill for us, you come around and you get quite a bit of speed coming down to what would be our downhill. We would have to put something in there so those guys have to crack the throttle and hit the brake a little bit. If you went down that downhill without that you'd catch so much air and you'd land and just be out of control when you hit."

Hoyt said using the newly added second West Bend corner configuration (just before the backward downhill) is not feasible for the Modifieds. The new corner configuration, which was added last year mainly for the American LeMans Series, slows down cars dramatically with a tight corner going into the traditional downhill.

"The corner is such a sharp left," Hoyt said. "The beginning of the corner is fine, the problem is that the corner is like [90 degrees] and those cars wouldn't turn that corner. It's way too tight. That would be the perfect solution but unfortunately the corner is just way to tight."

Hoyt said there were no issues with the cars going up what is traditionally the downhill. Barry reached about 142 mph on the frontstretch heading into what would now be the uphill for the Modifieds.

"The guys loved that," Hoyt said. "Nobody had any problem with that. There is some issues with some of the barriers that aren't quite set up for us to go the other way. That's stuff that the track is going to have to look at, whether its feasible for them to do or not. It's really all up in the air, but at least our portion we know that if we can get the outside of track and get the stuff situated with the track we think we could have a good race there. Its all good from our end. Whatever happens happens. At least we know that its definitely feasible from a car standpoint if the track can take care of the things they need to take care of. They may not want to. It's totally up to them."

Hoyt doesn't see a way that Modifieds could run the track safely in its normal configuration.

"We know now that if we ran it the way they run it, going into [big bend] I don't even want to know what would happen carrying the speed we were carrying," Hoyt said. "That's a 180 [degree] corner right there and I don't know how these guys would ever get slowed enough to do that. I don't know how they did it when they tested there before with the [Whelen Modified Tour] cars. I know the speed we were carrying doing the track the wrong way, I don't even want to think about the speed if you're coming down that hill and run that long straightaway into that corner. I bet you'd be doing 160 [mph]."

4 Comments

When I first heard of this I thought it was a goofy idea. After seeing this vid I've changed my mind. Looks like it may work. I'll be there if they do it.
Thinking outside the [box] oval, I like that. Thanks Shawn for the vid.

The mods on a roadcourse are great, but run them the right way. The track has all of the barriers in place for that. I'm surprised that the drivers would take the risk of running in the opposite direction when I'm sure that there were some spots that didn't have as much protection as they should.

They'd just need to break going into big bend. The WMT tour cars used to run at the Glen and they would have to get on the brakes hard going into turn one. Just like every other series that runs at these tracks. It could be done but I guess these drivers don't want to have to turn right very much.

it cost on average $3500 to convert a tour mod into a road course car.

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On August 18, 1995 Shawn Courchesne attended his first short track racing event, filling in on coverage for a Friday night show at Stafford Motor Speedway for the Hartford Courant. Little did he realize that night ... read more